2008 WTF??

[steve]

If you want a ready to use phone you can always download the Qtopia
distrubtion onto your freerunner and get
A perfectly great ready to use phone. Then you can wait while 2008.8 matures
and then download it when
It is end user ready.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org
[mailto:community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org] On Behalf Of Fredrik Wendt
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 3:04 PM
To: List for Openmoko community discussion
Subject: Re: 2008 WTF??

Jeff Davis wrote:

> Telling people to buy another phone if they want one that makes phone 
> calls is not exactly the kind of product endorsement most people are
looking for.

The smartphone is both hardware and software - it's not as trivial as a
hammer that you compared it with.

The hardware is set know and it's available for purchase (though delayed and
out of stock because of the demand).

The software is not finished yet. This is stated almost everywhere. 

Hence - if a person wants a ready to use phone, openmoko is not the way to
go. I'm pretty sure you'd agree (at it's present state).

I love my FreeRunner and today I actually used it "for real", using it as a
GPRS modem/gateway while I was on a train. Heck, that's even better than my
SonyEricsson M600i that I've used in the same way*. The SE phone however
often frooze about once an hour and I had to remove the battery to get it
back in a working state again. That didn't happen once with the FreeRunner.
It did however loose the connection to the network once (and I couldn't get
it to work again without rebooting the device :( )

Sorry if I made you think I don't recommend the FreeRunner - I do, but not
to anyone that wants a working phone _today_, because it's not.

/ Fredrik Wendt

* With the SE phone I used bluetooth to set up a rfcomm channel and used
that with wvdial. With the freerunner I used usb networking to carry my
packets from the laptop to the neo, and then iptables SNAT to route those
out on the ppp0 device (GPRS with the FSO methods).